The Shrine

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I like having Japanese players around. They're the friendliest damn bunch I've ever run into in online gaming. Sometimes I feel sorry for them by having to deal with us.

Having established servers is fantastic for the economy. Lots of crafted goods, a way to make decent money from critter drops, stuff like that. Very smooth.

But sometimes I think I am the only goddamn person out there who is actually going to go EARN their advanced jobs.

Ninja, Samurai and Dragoon all require parties to help you fight critters unless you want to wait until you're level 45+. This is fine, they're the expansion pack jobs, so when they came out people would be able to group up for them.

But here's the downside - the Japanese players.

I've seen too many people ask Japanese players to walk them through these things. No need to party up with people to kill the dragon, just have some level 60+ japanese player go in with you and mop the floor with it! One person in my linkshell (who I'm not especially fond of) has had people do the hard parts of the Samurai and Dragoon quests for him lately. Another guy was added to and in the shell for about 5 minutes before he started bragging about how obscenely he was twinked out by Japanese players (hint: If you have 2 million gil, you need to uninstall the damn game and go load up Progress Quest, because you're not walking on your own two feet here); I promptly broke his pearl and everyone was quite happy. It's not that he was an asshole, but it was just completely disgusting how badly he was twinked.

Am I the only one who wants to get my friends together, struggle to beat the dragon, and walk out of it having actually EARNED my Dragoon job? I'm honestly wondering...</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>And how goes the language barrier with the Japanese players?</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Twinking is a term that (best I can figure) comes from EQ, though it might be a DikuMUD tradition - then again, the two are practically the same. In EQ, there were no level restrictions on equipment, so you saw people "twinking" their alternate characters out - taking higher level, powerful equipment and sticking it on a level 1 character, thus allowing them to just blast their way through the levels with virtually no risk in a fraction of the time. In FFXI you can't twink QUITE as blatantly, since all equipment has a level requirement, but if you had a ton of money you could just hit the auction house up every level and buy the best stuff for your level, and it would similarly make things much easier.

I can understand the desire to twink, especially if you've worked your way up from scratch once or twice already - you've paid your dues, so to speak. It's when people are doing this crap on their first character that I get really annoyed.

And the language barrier is certainly there. There's an auto-translator in the game that translates a bunch of things from a menu (kind of like Phantasy Star Online), though there's some glaring omissions ("Thank you" amongst them). Even so, you can communicate reasonably well with that, with emotes (/clap, /cheer, /bow, etc), and so forth. Trying to coordinate complicated skillchains in a group setting, however, is a very, very difficult task.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>In D2 i think they called it "tweaking", before lvl requirements of course.</div>

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>Me, I'm working my ass off for levels. and also working hard for my money and equipment. Another way I've been getting stuff is by helping people. Contrary to the way most peopel act there are a few who will remember you in the future when you save their ass. I have had people add me to their frineds list simply because I saved them in a situation or helped them out of a jam. I'm not talking about the idiots that ask for free shit in towns....them I just want to shut the hell out. I'm talking about the people running away from monsters needing help. Or being in an area and needing help with a quest. When you stop to help people do rememeber. The same way they remember the jackasses that just watch them die when they call for help. just the other day soem guy I didn't even remember gave me 500 gil because I saved his life when he was level 3. And another guy I helped finish mission 2 gave me a stack of light crystals in return for my help.

What I do love about the game is the japanese players. The japanese players are polite. If you can't understand them they communicate well through emotion and pointing. things like that. And they almost always help. I've been revived multiple times by japanese players and last night a high level white mage was following me and healing me over and over again while I fought stronger monsters. Things like that are what make this game great.

Not only that but the guys in my linkshell are also very helpfull. Try to find a good group because there are a lot of dumbasses out there. I think we may be the only shell without a character named Legolass Legolasss, leggolas, lagolas or (put name here)X. I mean christ americans....come up with some fucking names you unoriginal fucksticks

That being said The one and only gripe I have with the game are the NA players. I don't mind the stupid names. that's just a funny thing. but I do mind their ass holishness. From what I've found (it may get better at higher levels) is that US players are greedy bastards. They will just watch you die and then swoop in for the kill rather than helping when yoiu call for help. Personally I find that to be a bastardly thing to do and it seems that a lot of NA players do it. But it's ok. when people do that I give em shit through tells. It's what can be expected with a new online game. Hopefully as time goes on that will improve.

I've even gotten used to the exp penalty. My strategy is just to build a cussion off easy monsters so that I can die once against the harder beasts and not lose a level.....

Well I'm off to snag some beer. Have a good night guys and adeiu</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Pretty sure twink came from EQ... the Diablo 2 term just doesn't have the same ring.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Does the fact that someone didn't have to go through the same loops you did mean it's less enjoyable?</div>

<div style='font: 14pt ; text-align: left; '>Wow, must be the server you're on or something. On mine, just about everyone's cool, I've only had to /blist 2 people so far. (spammers) Then again I'm not all that social on the game either</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>And then the asshole bitched about how the group next to him didn't help him. One, he didn't give up the monster (Ctrl+G), so of course the monster is still claimed and nobody could touch it anyway. Two, it's not the group's job to fix his problems over and over again, unless he is legitimately in a bind and acknowledges it as such.

I have a feeling a lot of the American assholes fall into two groups: 1) newbies that are used to playing FF games and this is their first MMO, or 2) people who are very familiar with MMOs and are used to the old arcane MMO physics that create assholes and thus act like assholes themselves.

I have to admit that Square has some fucking genius ideas, some of which are so fucking simple that I wonder about the intelligence factor of all of the other MMO creators. For example, there are no stealkills in this game. Monsters are claimed, so there's no fucking way to "abuse monsters" or steal xp from others. The auction house, while has a few downfalls, is fucking great! (I just wish it was advertised a bit better than you sell shit at the auction house and NOT at the store.) Autolooting...jesus...FUCKING DUH! What brainless shithead at every other MMO thought it was a good idea for people to actually spend time looting every fucking body they saw?!

The interface is very very well polished. It's like Square is saying to the other MMO guys: "God, you fucking wannabes. You are shit. 989, you call yourselves professionals? We make a fucking movie! A FUCKING MOVIE!! Can you do that assholes?!"

And between Square-Enix and Lucasarts, the big guns have been put into play, to show everybody else that they don't know shit. From now on, I don't think the small time "company created solely for the purpose of launching this MMO" (*cough* Mythic *cough*) will even get off the ground, unless they really have some big ideas. At least Blizzard has some ground to stand on with its new MMO, as they have definitely be around the block. (They can't balance a game worth a shit, but...)</div>